Chapter 7: Deep-dyed Drywall

Deep-dyed Drywall

Understanding boundaries of a relation are more important than to understand the relation itself

After all the inner conflict whether to go or not to, Arita couldn’t say no to Amar and visited his home. This wasn’t her first time at his house and Amar’s mother knew her well. This time even his father was there at home and she didn’t have had to introduce her to him because he had already identified her while he opened the doors for her, when she rang the bell. She was surprised at that, but she thought it was obvious as she was the only girl visiting and he must have had informed his parents about the guest list for that day. When she arrived he was still asleep. Arita had a long conversation with his father and things went pretty smoothly and fast. The previous night she was depressed thinking about her dark past and then about the weird things happening with her in the present. When Amar got ready, they went to his room where he asked her about what was going on with her. She couldn’t control and burst out crying. He held her, placed his palms onto her cheeks and comforted her. He was speechless and didn’t know how to calm her down. Things were going out of her hands too as she couldn’t hold back her tears. She felt good when Amar attended to her with tenderness, not knowing why? Generally, she hated people when they tried to comfort her in her vulnerable times, besides a guy doing it would have been a disaster. She would take it as an embarrassing situation where people show pity on her and mock her in their minds thinking ‘What a weakling!’, even though they wouldn’t think that way in reality. Her ego would be hurt and she would burn in anger and smash the guy’s head. It was ironic that she didn’t feel that way when Amar held her and cared for her. She felt better and eventually revealed a little about her past and spilt her greatest fear, “I don’t like when people become good friends of mine as I know at some point in my life they’ll leave me behind to live alone. I am afraid of being happy Amar. I am scared now that I am so happy. I don’t like it.”Amar didn’t know how to calm her down and all he could say was, “Never have I been in this situation. I don’t know how to handle this but one thing I want you to know that there is nothing wrong in being happy and you should be happy. I don’t know Arita, I really have never seen you like this. You are so strong and bold; I just can’t see you crying. Please calm down.”

That’s when the doorbell tweeted and Arita came back to her senses and composed herself and looked at Amar. He asked, “You are alright?”She nodded and asked him to see who was at the door. He left as Arita requested him to leave. She wiped up her tears and washed her face before anyone else could see her like that. Amar entered the room accompanied with Anand. Arita waved at him and then the room filled with usual teasing and laughter. After a while, even Rishab arrived and they all had a fun time together. She was getting teary-eyed at times while Amar observed her and did something cute or funny that her mood and expressions changed. The day was spent well. She didn’t plan to stay back but Amar’s father didn’t let her leave as it had got dark, so she had to stay back. The later evening they spent the time together watching comedy videos and listening to the various genre of music. After dinner, Amar told her, “You were right. It is Divya. I have a crush on her.” A few weeks back while they were spending time together, Divya passed by and spoke to them. Arita knew Divya as they were from the same batch. That’s when she guessed the girl Amar spoke about earlier was her, maybe and had asked him if it was her, but he denied. Today he spilt the bean. Arita was excited as her guess was right. She smirked at him. Then he told her the history about him and Divya, how they were good friends and how they drifted apart. Then the story went on for a while then they went off to random topics to discuss. When she went to bed that night she just thought how stupid of her it was to think it was her. “Well now when I know it’s not me and it’s Divya I need not worry about upsetting him. He wasn’t avoiding me; he was just depressed because of Divya. Is that why I was upset? Well even after knowing the truth doesn’t make me feel better. Why do I still have that obscure pain? Probably I should just sleep.” Her rumination was interrupted by Amar’s text. They texted for a while wished each other goodnight and she fell asleep listening to ambient music.